I was kneeling in a stinking stable in a cave. My face still hurt from where the Roman solider had slapped me that afternoon.
Nevertheless, I said, “Ask her to pray for me. Pray for me now, and at the hour of my death. I want to see my wife again. I want to hold her, be with her. And talk to her.”
The girl stood up, and moved toward me with footsteps so smooth she seemed to be gliding. She put both hands on my head, and said something in her liquid tongue. I felt a flush at her touch, as if my hair were trying to stand up, and the sensation moved from my head down my spine like a warmth through my body. She again touched my chin and bade me to stand up. She smiled and gestured toward the cave mouth. The audience was over.
I turned once to look toward the child. The tiny oil lamp was behind and beneath the trough of hay where the baby slept, and the yellow light slanted through the wide, crude slats and caught the wisps of hay sticking up around his tiny head so that a circle of gold, like a crown of fire, hung there. If my eye had been an inch to the left or right, I would not have seen it. I blinked, and it was gone.
I walked away into the night.
In one hand, I had a fistful of straw that I was using to wipe at my knee, to get the clinging filth off, and then with the other hand I was wiping my face. And now I started to sob in earnest. I had come for answers. I had actually seen the Messiah, held him in my arms, something every Christian has probably wanted to do, and still there was no answer for me.
What now? Find the machine, climb on, go back to a year when my wife was still alive? And then what? Knock that version of me over the head and replace him? Pile her on the machine, and find a time in the future when they could cure everyone of everything? Behind me was a little warm cave lit by a tiny light, where the cure for everyone and everything was supposed to be, it had not cured me.
And I had forgotten my shoes.
Feeling like a fool, I turned and walked back over the cold ground, but now it was completely dark, and the tiny glint of light from the oil lamp was gone. Frugal people did not waste oil at night. I could not see the cave mouth. After a few moments walking, I was sure I had gone too far, and now I turned again and went the other way, or what I thought was the other way, but all I found was a land of rocks and darkness where it became cold very quickly in the gloom.
I pulled out my phone and opened it, hoping to use the screen as a flashlight, but it had run out of power at some point. I could not remember the last time I’d recharged it. I had not prepared for a hike, or to go camping, or to go time traveling, and had not even brushed up on my ancient languages or brought a compass or anything. I had followed a crazy man in a top hat, the descendant of an equally crazy scientist, because I was half crazy myself that morning, alone by the grave. Not one of her family had come. Not one.
I stubbed a toe and stepped on a stinging insect at the same time. It was like a white-hot needled being plunged into my heel.
“Jesus Christ!” I shouted in English. Then, hoping God would not notice I had been swearing, I quickly said, “Um, uh, forgive us our sins and save us from the fires of hell and lead all souls to heaven, including those in most need of thy mercy.”
Then I had an idea. I closed my eyes and just listened. There were lots of animals in the village, and maybe more than one cave was being used as a place to stall animals, but if I were still near the cave mouth, maybe I could hear something.
Sure enough, I heard bleating. It was a young sheep, complaining about something. I groped my way in the dark in that direction, stepping on every sharp stone and thorny bush in Palestine.
I did not find the cave mouth, but found the sheep. By that time, my eyes had adjusted to the starlight. It was a young lamb, a baby sheep.
The lamb was by itself, in a little hollow, and there were thorn bushes all around it. But no cave, and no shoes.
I turned away. The poor fellow bleated so pathetically. I looked over my shoulder, “Believe me, pal, I know the feeling.” I took a step, and he bleated again.
I sighed. Then I sighed again. I took off my shirt, wrapped it around my hands, and used that the push aside the nettles and stingers of the bush. I waded into the thorns for that dumb animal. Why? Because there was no one else around to do it.
Once inside, scratched and bleeding, I said, “Come on, sport.” And I pulled the lamb with a heave-ho up onto my shoulders. Then lamb bleated louder. By that point, with my luck, I was sure he was going to void his bowels on my shoulder.
I was surrounded on all sides by thorn-bush. Where was the break I had just so painfully trampled?
“Okay, sport,” I said to the lamb. “You got in here somehow. Do you know the way out? And maybe back to the spot where my shoes are, not to mention a warm stall for you, and plenty of yummy Lamb Chow? And why aren’t any shepherds watching you, this time of year? Did they hear voices singing in heaven, and just leave their work, to go look at the Messiah? I did that too. But she is still gone.”
And the lamb said, “No, the shepherd chief, Asher, asked Gabriel to watch us, and see we did not stray. When we were alone with the Archangel, he granted us the power of speech which Adam the Fallen King would have given us from that great tree which fairest Eve the Fallen Queen robbed, so that once and this once only, the paschal lambs could kneel and pray. Now we have a new Eve, and she has born us a new Adam.”
I was too shocked to throw the talking beast from my shoulders. The starlight from one single star above me suddenly grew brighter, or my eyes adjusted, and now I could see the circle of thorns was not a circle, but a spiral, and all I had to do was walk and turn and turn again, to be free. Not to keep the bad course I was on.
I took a step. “Are you a time traveler?”
“No. They are thickly gathered here, but in vain. They are not permitted to see the child.”
“Why can’t they see him?”
“Do you know, Gabriel was asking me that just an hour ago. Why can’t they see him?”
This was an insane conversation. I laughed, trying to take things as they seemed. “So! You are a Passover lamb? Do you mind being eaten?”
“All who are loyal to the Master wish to be consumed as He is consumed. For what other purpose was He born? For what other purpose was I created? The Sons of Adam were given dominion over us, and gave us our names. As you live in Him, so we live in you.”
“That sounds wrong, somehow,” I said.
“Your ears are thick with folly,” said the lamb.
“I must be asleep,” I muttered.
“You will soon wake, as do all who sleep in the Lord.” he said. “Now ask your question I was sent to answer.”
“I did not see the Star of Bethlehem. Or the three kings.”
“More than three mages will come, and they come first to Jerusalem, the City of David. They are horoscope-casters and astrologers from the ruling clan of the Zoroastrians, and the Lord will show through them how He can turn evil crafts to good purposes. This is not for two years to come. But that is not your question.”
I drew a breath. “Are you the comforter sent to comfort me?”
“No comfort is given to the sons of Adam except after tribulation and temptation. You are in the fire. You are being refined. And that was not your question.”
“Why does it hurt so much? This fire?”
“You know.”
“Because my faith is small? Because I love my sins?”
“You say it. Not I. And that was not your question.”
A cloud passed before the bright star. I stopped walking. The thorns were all around me. I could not see the path.
I said, “Will I see my wife again?”
“You will see her again. She waits for you, robed in white linen, by the river of the waters of life which flows from the throne, and a cup of those waters is in her hand, and her hair is woven a crown of the blossoms from the trees who leaves are for the healing of nations. You must first suffer death, as the child will, and resurrection, as he will. Beyond the trial
is comfort. Beyond the darkness, light. But she will not be your wife there. None marry, nor are any given in marriage. The union is more intimate. And still that was not your question.”
“Maybe I should ask why you people always speak in riddles!”
“Maybe I would answer that you people never ask the right questions.”
I knelt and put him from my shoulders.
Kneeling, my face was near his muzzle. I was looking to see if there were some trick. To be honest, I wanted him in front of me, if the cloud would pass away from the star, so I could see whether or not his lips were really moving.
That was when it finally struck me, and despite the tears that still stained my face, and the bleeding scratches all over the rest of me, and the Roman hand shaped bruise running from my ear to my jawline, I started laughing.
I could not help it. It was too funny.
The lamb just looked at me with big, solemn eyes.
“I didn’t mean to laugh,” I said, hiccuping and trying to control myself. “I wanted to see if—if your lips were moving. And then, you see, I met this time traveler in Rome, and he was afraid to use the time machine, and I used my crucifix instead of my wedding ring, so the machine led me here, and then—then there was this dying guy with no pants on, and a Roman punched me like you’d kick a dog, and this little kid from the Sixth Cosmic sitcom or something who wears electric jewelry got his brain blasted when I shoved his head through a wall trying to kill me, on account of I didn’t let Antarctica conquer the moon in the Forty Second Freaking Century, and Saint Joseph kissed me on the lips, and I held the baby Jesus, and now, and now, and now I want to see if your mouth moves. I am afraid of being tricked. You know, because some things are too hard to believe. Don’t let yourself be fooled! Seeing is believing!”
“Listen,” the little lamb said.
And I bent my head toward him, but he said nothing. “What is it?”
The little lamb said, “Do you hear what I hear?”
In the distance, I heard a bell tolling. It was a solemn, slow, beautiful sound.
It was so lovely to hear, that the crazy laughter died on my lips.
The lamb said softly, “That is the alarm bell from the Roman fort, foretelling the downfall of the pagan world and all its arrogant love of cruelty. The Christian world to come shall be cruel as well, but it will be a world that will not love cruelty. Every bell on the face of the Earth is ringing this night, from the Pillars of Hercules, to Ultima Thule, to the springs of the Nile, to the Forbidden City and beyond. The bells sing in joy for the Savior’s birth. The stars also sing, but only my masters, the shepherd band, heard them. Asher, Zebulun, Justus, Nicodemus, Joseph, Barshabba, and Jose. They had prayed, you see. They pondered the word spoken to Job, and wished to know when it shall be that the morning stars sing together, and all the sons of light shout for joy? This is that night. There is no war being waged anywhere, on any front, for this one night and this one alone. Will you finally ask your question now?”
I drew a deep breath. “It seems so stupid.”
“God uses the fools of the world to confound the wise, Jonathan.”
I closed my eyes. “Why me? Of all the historians and sages and widows or widowers who suffered a loss, and saints who kept their vows and wise men, and everyone else, everyone in the world, why was I given a ride on that machine, and allowed to come here, and allowed to hold him in my arms, that little baby who holds the universe in his?”
My eyes popped open in shock. “Oh, good grief! I forgot to tell her that Jesus would be in the Temple when he turned twelve! That he is not in the caravan! I could have saved her all that grief! Jesus Christ, what the hell was I thinking!! Whoops, I mean heck. I mean Jesus Christ save me.”
“Be of good cheer,” said the lamb with perfect seriousness. “Your prayers will sustain and comfort her, whether you speak them now or later. Eternity entertains all prayers at once. And now comes the one who will answer you.”
I saw a light in the distance. It was clear enough that I saw the path again, and so, without any more mishaps with the thorns, I came into place where the ground was clear of rocks and nettles. It felt like turned soil under my feet, and the earth was cool and soothed my aches and stings.
The light was a lantern being held in the hand of a being shaped like a man dressed all in white, purer than any white Earth could make. Over his shoulder was a shepherd’s crook. Tucked through his belt was a golden horn. On his head was a hood or veil which hid his eyes, but I could see his nose and mouth.
“Rise,” he said, because I had realized who he was, and my knees failed and I had collapsed in panic. “Fear not. I am but a fellow servant of the same One you serve. See that you do not bow to me! I must return the lost lamb to the fold.”
I said, “Gabriel? Were you really watching the sheep so the shepherds could go see the child?”
The great being nodded slowly beneath his veil.
“Why was I allowed to see him? And not all the other time travelers? And not everyone?”
He said to me, “Lost lamb, if you were the only man alive, the only one who had ever sinned, and every other Son of Adam had remained pure and upright, it would all have been done for you. For you the child was born. For you he lives and dies. For you.”
The living being raised the lantern, and I saw it was a spiral galaxy inside the glass, not a candle, and clusters and superclusters of galaxies. “It is all for you. The stars love you, and He who, by his word, lit the stars and set them dancing, from the greatest to the least. Everything in the cosmos, all the light of all the worlds, to the blood shed by the Messiah. It is all for you, John Went.
“And more than a mere cosmos! Eternity and infinity are yours, endless life, unbound joy. You shall be rejoined with the one you love, and all the ones you love, and the love will be greater than mortal tongues can pray to ask or praise in thanksgiving.”
I did not know if he meant I would meet her that very hour, or only after many long seasons of life in this eon or many others. But I knew, then, that it did not matter. Only one question mattered.
“Why? Why? Why?” I shouted at him.
Gabriel smiled and he leaned, and he spoke very softly in my ear.
“Do you not give gifts to those you love?”
Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus
Christmas Eve
Her name was Ginny. She was six years old, and it was Christmas Eve.
Her eyelids trembled and slowly her eyes closed. With a painful effort, she tried to stay awake. For a moment, her face was utterly at peace. Then with a little sigh of effort, her eyelids fluttered open.
“Mommy…? Is it all right…?”
“Hush, now,” Her mother replied. “Everything is all right.”
“Mommy, is it all right if I stay up until Saint Nicholas comes? Just this once? I won’t ask again.”
Her mother’s name was also Virginia. She was bent over the bed, passing her hand over her daughter’s face, comforting, soothing.
“Yes … just this once … Stay awake. Stay awake for Santa Claus, baby…”
Virginia passed her hand over her daughter’s head as if to smooth too-curly blonde hair; but Ginny had no hair any longer.
“… I hear the sleigh bells…” Ginny said. “He’s coming…How will he fit?”
“What was that?” Virginia bent close to her daughter’s barely-moving lips.
“No chimney. There is no chimney here. How will Saint Nicholas get in?”
There was no chimney in the terminal ward of the children’s hospital.
“He’ll think of something, baby. He’s Santa. Just have faith. Just hold on.”
One of the many blinking boxes connected to the little girl gave off an alarm which sounded like a bright, sharp ringing as if from small bells. Ginny smiled weakly at the noise, no doubt thinking it was sleigh bells, and said, “Will I see Saint Nicholas?”
“Yes, darling, O, yes my darling.” Virginia’s eyes were bright with
unshed tears. “Santa Claus is coming. You will see him.”
The medical technicians and the nurses, voices tense but low, uttering precise commands as quickly and crisply as a priest conducting a well-known and long-beloved ritual, continued their desperate work as one alarm and then the next rang out. There was no room around the bed for Virginia to stand and hold her daughter’s hand.
The doctor told her not to worry. He gave Virginia some vague reassurance, as false but well-meant as telling a child to believe in Santa Claus.
The little girl’s eyelids trembled and slowly her eyes closed. She tried to stay awake.
After two hours and a half, as one alarm after another fell silent, and one monitor after another showed a flat line, they stopped their attempt to revive her. The doctor signed the certificate, showing the time of death as 11: 53. Seven minutes before Christmas Day.
She had lived to be six years old, and it was Christmas Eve.
Virginia could see, through blurring tears and through the Venetian blinds of the hospital room, how thickly the fresh snow was fallen outside, unmarked by footprint or tire tread, to make a scene as silent and perfect as a postcard.
Across the street was a store with window display, bright with holly wreaths, where little mechanical elves, tireless, went through the motions of making toys before a throne on which Santa sat.
For some reason, perhaps due to health concerns, the decorator had made this Santa thin and tall, and instead of a fur cap with white trim, adorned his head with a stern headdress that tapered to a point at front and back with a deep cleft between.
The store front display seemed particularly cruel to Virginia. Back when her daughter had been strong enough to get out of bed, she would stand before the window, wondering, delighted that Santa was so close, almost within reach. Mother and daughter would stand, hand in hand, trying to catch the cheerful notes of the toy store music over the noise of the traffic.
She held the cold body, the life she once had carried inside her own, delighting at every sensation of a kick or turning over. She held it until more than an hour went by. Virginia did not want them to cover the face, the sweet little face. All her daughter’s pain was gone, now. Her own pain would never end, now.
The Book of Feasts & Seasons Page 19
